“Can you pass me the potatoes?”

Pops voice sounded muffled, as if he was speaking underwater. Or maybe I was the one who was underwater. But everything was so dark, so calm.

“Can you pass me the potatoes?” his voice sounded louder, but still muffled. I was feeling warm. Was I cold before?

“Cass? Can you pass me the potatoes?” his voice finally was able to snap me out of my stupor.

Blinking a few times, I tried to get my bearings. For some reason, I had no memory about how I got here. Was I doing something before? Wasn’t I in danger? “Are we having soup again?” my body moved almost mechanically to the pantry. Knowing what Pops just asked.

“Not today. I was reading the recipe book from the old world that talked about baked potato, and I want to try making it,” Pops replied.

“Are you sure this is going to work? I remember the last time you tried something from that recipe book. Was it meat bread? That thing was raw in the middle and burnt in the edges.”

“It was meatloaf, and cooking is an art. It takes practice to master.”

“You can practice all you want, but other types of art don’t require you to torture your granddaughter.”

“Some people might disagree with you. Or are you forgetting Shirley’s concerto?” he chuckled.

I stopped, the potato still in my hand, “I don’t want to remember that, much less the fact that she dragged the entire village to the basement for it. Some of the children will never be the same. But it doesn’t matter how awful her singing is. I’m not her granddaughter. So my point stands.”

After I finally gave him the potato, my grandpa, Rakeen, started making his new experimental dinner, “Fine, fine. By the way. Are you ready for tomorrow?”

Just thinking about it made me groan loudly, “Yeah. I am. I have everything I need, but I really didn’t want to do this.”

“You can delay if you want,” Rakeen said.

“I know. But it wouldn’t be fair. Besides, they already want to know about it. Vanessa menstruated for the first time during class today. It’s not like I can pretend nothing happened. The kids saw a decent amount of blood. And I’m not even that worried about them.”

“The parents?” Rakeen glanced back as I just nodded in reply, “Yeah. They never take it well. You figure they would be happy having the kids understand that, but I guess some things don’t change. Even in the old world, there were people who freaked out when it was time to talk about the birds and the bees. Still, I’m more surprised about Vanessa. She’s 10, isn’t she? She got her period early.”

His phrasing made me shiver, “The fact that you associate bees with sex is terrifying. Apparenlty, Vanessa’s mom also had her period early, so maybe it’s a genetic thing? I don’t know. Not like we can figure that out. But she seems fine.”

“That’s good. Also, bees were much smaller back then. And they still do the same thing. Pollinate flowers and mostly leave us alone. Hornets are the assholes. Still, let me know if I can do anything to help. I may be retired, but I was a fine teacher.”

“True, and the kids miss you. Why don’t you teach tomorrow’s class then?”

“Not even if you were giving me some chocolate. You already tricked me into doing that with the last class. I won’t make that mistake again.”

“C’mon, it’s been four years already. You really need to get over that. Can’t you teach tomorrow’s class? I’ll love you forever if you do it,” I pouted, trying my best puppy dog face.

“You’re going to love me forever even if I don’t, and I know it,” Rakeen chuckled.

With a scoff, I continued, “That’s why you’re still single. No one wants to be with someone so cocky.”

“I’m single because no woman in the world can compare to your late grandma. I’m the one who refuses them, not the other way around.”

“Yeah, right,” I rolled my eyes.

“Speaking of her,” Rakeen placed the potatoes in the oven and walked towards his bed. We lived in what could be called a large metal container, making the entire thing a single large room. Reaching inside a drawer, he pulled out a wooden box with various patterns split by diagonals all over it.

The old man smiled, looking at it, his almost black eyes filling with sadness. With a sniff, he turned around, took a small towel from the drying rack on the side of the room. He patted his forehead and gray beard dry before returning to the table where I was sitting.

“Here. Happy birthday.”

“Pops…” I reached out for the box, seeing how each unique pattern fought against each other all over the entire frame. Still, it was oddly beautiful, “But my birthday is only tomorrow,” I glanced at Rakeen, who raised an eyebrow, “You know what I mean. To everyone else, it is tomorrow.”

I didn’t know the exact date of my birth; after all, I had lost my parents when my previous home was attacked by the Eaters. Luckily, Rakeen was there to save me, to bring me to this village, and take me in as his granddaughter. It helped a lot that we shared the same skin tone, a dark bronze that glowed when under the sun.

Even our facial features were similar: deep-set brown eyes with round noses that ended in a round tip. Both had an oval head and plump lips. In the past, Rakeen also had the same type of hair as I did: long, wild, and untamed. But with age, he decided against what he called ‘the jungle man’ look and wrapped his long gray hair in dreadlocks. This was a good call since many would ask if he was around 50 despite being in his mid-70s, and most of the women in the village were charmed by his appearance.

The fact he still maintained his muscles also helped. Not that I was that far behind, although I focused more on flexibility and agility than pure strength. In the end, that gave me a leaner build instead of the somewhat hulking physique of my father figure.

“I know, but tomorrow, everyone will be showing up to celebrate with you. I just wanted to have a moment, just us.”

I smiled, “I get what you mean. The party will be fun and all, but this is more us,” looking back at the box, I tried to open it, but it didn’t seem like there was a way to do so. Yet, there was something rattling inside, “What is this? Am I supposed to break it?”

“NO!” Rakeen almost jumped to stop me, “That is the last gift your grandmother gave me. Please don’t just break it.”

“Then tell me that kind of thing first!” I gasped.

“Fine, fine. There goes the moment,” Rakeen huffed, “That is a puzzle box. There is a way to open it. Without breaking it! All you have to do is find out. Inside, you will find the first gift your grandmother ever gave me.”

“Pops… and you are giving me both?” I felt my eyes water but stopped when I looked towards him, and noticed an odd expression, “What?”

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“I mean… If I’m being honest. What’s inside is the gift. I still want to keep the box,” I gave him a blank stare. Would it kill him to be more clear in whatever he was giving me? He saw my expression, “What? I thought it would be a nice way to give you. You always loved puzzles and games. But those are the only two things I still have from Camilla, and I’m not ready to let both of them go. Besides, you can get the box when I’m dead.”

I rolled my eyes again; the way this was going, they would be tired before dinner, “Fine, fine. I’ll give it back to you. And stop talking about dying. You are healthier than anyone in the village. I mean it. Some of the hunters have trouble keeping up with you.”

Rakeen opened a large smile and winked at me, “Oh, stop it, you. You’ll make me blush,” he said in a joking tone, and walked back to the kitchen to check on the potatoes. He had just put them in the oven, but since it was a new recipe, he was worried, “Before I forget. Try not to be angry at the box. And if you give up, you can tell me, and I’ll open it for you. When Camilla first got me that one, it took me two hours to find the first-“

“Oh, it clicked? Then, maybe this one? And then this?” I started moving the pieces of the box, pushing parts of the sides around, and moving entire plates of wood. At one point, the different patterns formed the word ‘New.’ With one more move, it changed to ‘user.’ And the third shift changed one last time to ‘detected.’ It was strange, I read those words, but didn’t feel the urge to comment. Why was that?

Rakeen watched me for a moment, probably not realizing that I could see what he was doing. After a few seconds, he turned back to the kitchen, grumbling about something that I wasn’t able to hear. Fifteen minutes later, I pushed the final piece to the side, opening the lid of the box.

“Got it,” I shouted with a big smile.

“Oh, why don’t you solve the Yang-Mills problem while you are at it!” Pops huffed.

I paused for a moment, trying to understand what he was talking about, but there was nothing in my mind about this Yang-Mills thing, “What the hell is that?”

Pops took a deep breath without turning away from the oven, “It’s a mathematical problem from the old world. Part of the millennium problems, and there was a prize for it. Don’t worry about it. It doesn’t matter anymore anyway,” he turned back to face me, “I’m sorry you finished that so soon. I thought it would take longer. It took me a couple of days to open that box after your grandmother gave it to me.”

“I can see that,” I replied, getting a raised eyebrow from my grandfather, “I mean, it makes sense. You were a physicist, weren’t you?”

“Astrophysicist, but yes.”

“Yeah, so your life was about learning the laws of the universe and finding those patterns in things that didn’t make any sense. Breaking everything down into logical steps that followed a particular order. A puzzle like this is more about thinking outside the box. Going against any rule or pattern.”

Rakeen chuckled, “That is almost exactly what your grandmother told me when she gave me that. I wish you could’ve met her. You two would’ve gotten along.”

I gave him a sad smile, “Me too. Even if we would make your life a living hell when we wanted to.”

“Oh, absolutely. Camilla had a way to push my buttons when she wanted. Just like a certain soon-to-be 25-year-old that I know.”

This time, I was the one who chuckled before pushing the lid open to see what was inside. My gift, the real gift, not just the game to get it, was a necklace.

It was made out of silver, and the pendant was a simple circle with eight smaller circles engraved. Each of those circles had a hole in a different position, and between the fourth and fifth circles, there was a ring of small dots. In the center was a small piece of gold or some sort of golden orange metal.

“Is this… the solar system?”

“Yep, including Pluto. Your grandmother always complained about how we stopped calling it a planet. That mineral in the center is actually part of a meteorite that fell in Spain. She participated in the study of that area during the summer that we started dating. Neither of us was sure if we could stay five months apart when our relationship wasn’t even three months old. But I just couldn’t think about anyone else after meeting her. Luckily, neither did she. When she came back, she gave me that necklace. And I remember thinking back then that I wanted to keep that in the family in the future. If we decided to have kids. Not that I already knew we were going to be together and get married. It was just one of those things that you think when you are in a new relationship.”

“That is a very sweet story, Pops. And are you sure you want to give me this? It seems really important,” I kept staring at the necklace without taking it out of the box. Even if I called her grandmother, I had never met Camilla. My grandmother died before Pops ever found me when I was a kid, and an eater attacked the place where I lived, killing my parents in the process. It felt like something personal, something that should be kept in the family, and not having met Camilla made me unsure if I deserved this gift. I mean, Pops did mention something about having siblings. Maybe the right thing to do was to give that to one of them, something that belonged to his own blood.

I heard Pops walking over to me, and he cupped my face with his large hands filled with calluses. He lowered his body and kissed my forehead before looking me in my eyes, “Cass. My Cassandra, you are my grandchild. And, by extension, Camilla’s. It doesn’t matter if you never met her. You are the daughter we never had. Well, granddaughter. You already have a father and a mother, and I would never want to erase what they did to protect you. I’m sure Camilla is watching us and agreeing with me as I say this. You are family; you have every right to have this necklace, and I’d rather give it to you before I kick the bucket.”

He paused for a moment, letting the words sink in before giving me another forehead kiss and rushing back to the oven to finish dinner. I smiled, holding in a chuckle. He managed to realize what was going on through my mind without me saying anything. Either he knew me that well, or I had the worst poker face in the history of the world.

“Thanks, pops. And thanks, Grandma Camilla. I hope you are looking down on us with a smile,” I said before putting on the necklace.

“To be fair, she might be looking up. I love that woman to bits, but we did some stuff that might send us downstairs,” Rakeen joked as he moved his hand a bit too close to the fire and burned the tip of his fingers. Maybe that happened due to his distraction or just a coincidence, but in my mind, it was Grandma Camilla complaining about the joke. Even if I wasn’t sure how the afterlife worked.

We ate, talking about our days for a while longer, Rakeen commenting on his experiments. He was currently trying to grow a glow-in-the-dark moss to allow the village to have lights, proper lights after sunset, and not just the candles we currently used.

I just talked about my class and how I was thinking about changing my morning workout. For a while now, my current routine was feeling a bit stale. It was too easy, and I felt like I was just keeping my body in the current shape, not improving it. When we finished, I started doing the dishes and asked.

“Pops, since my birthday, well, our birthday is today. Can I go watch a movie?”

Rakeen squinted at me for a moment, “Did you charge the battery?”

“I did. It was raining yesterday, so I used the bike for cardio.”

“Then sure. Just don’t stay up late. Tomorrow you still have class. And you are going to watch something, not play?” even if we weren’t being specific, both understood what they were talking about. Under the metal container that was our house, there was another one.

Another metal container that Pops spent years preparing and reinforcing, covering the entire outside with rubber, concrete, steel and magnets to trap any electric signals that came from inside. This was, in essence, a much more powerful and much more restrictive version of the circle surrounding the village that hid us from the Eaters.

“Not really. I just wanted to watch something. Games are fine and all, but I don’t know. They are just not doing it for me these days,” across the years, Pops had managed to gather several video games, a television, and dozens of hard drives filled with various shows and movies. In addition to a battery that he hooked up to a stationary bicycle to allow it to be charged.

“I see. Do you mind if I join you then? We can watch something together,” Pops suggested.

“Sure, let me just finish this,” I cleaned the last dish, and then we moved his mattress to reveal a hidden hatch. Opening it, we started going down the stairs and pulling a rubber net across the tunnel before opening a second hatch and waiting a moment to ventilate the place.

When starting this out, Pops made the mistake of never allowing new air to fill the hidden container. Nothing happened at first, but after several months of use, it became hard to breathe down there. Finally, we came down to the ‘basement’ of our home, a container much smaller than the one we lived in, being just about half the size but still large enough for us to move comfortably.

I rushed towards a specific shelf on the wall, where a Blu-ray of a show I wanted to watch was located, and in less than a minute, we were ready. The TV and the video game console turned on, and the episode of the series started. There was a brief flash of a text line on the screen but I was just for a split second. I think it said something about the network. I never realized that something like that appeared.

But the show started playing right after. It was one of the sitcoms from the old world, the kind of thing that I just loved. Being able to imagine life in a big city, surrounded by people, with the biggest problem being which boy I wanted to date, sounded so alien that it couldn’t even be called a dream. Yet, it was all I wanted right now.

For a handful of minutes, I was going to focus on the show. Not on the monsters that could attack the village, the Eaters that roamed around the forest, or the issues we were having with our crops.

For the next hour or so, I would be part of the old world instead of this new world that took my parents and my grandmother from me before I was even able to get to know them.